Five Fast Questions with Owen Innes: Part Three

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01]: This is 63 Percent Scottish, a Scotland appreciation podcast.

[00:00:08] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to 63 Percent Scottish. My name is Eamon OFlynn. I'm your host. I'm here with

[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_00]: our guest from our last full episode, Owen Innes, to run through five fast questions.

[00:00:17] [SPEAKER_00]: That's where I ask five questions and challenge our guests to answer each in one minute

[00:00:21] [SPEAKER_00]: or less. Are you ready, Owen?

[00:00:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. Sorry.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

[00:00:29] [SPEAKER_00]: What is one place every visitor to Scotland should check out? Be as specific as possible.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_00]: I know Orkney is immediately coming to mind. You can say that. I will allow it.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah. I think I can't think of anywhere else other than Orkney.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_01]: So the Orkney Islands are an archipelago of 70 different islands, but mainland Orkney

[00:00:55] [SPEAKER_01]: in particular. You can get through. There's five islands that you can go to via causeways,

[00:01:02] [SPEAKER_01]: but mainland Orkney, Skara Brae, the Ring of Brodgar, Maithau Burial Tomb are three

[00:01:08] [SPEAKER_01]: of the biggest highlights for me. So mainland Orkney would be the best place to go to.

[00:01:13] [SPEAKER_01]: All right. What is your favorite uniquely Scottish word or phrase?

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, easy. Cludgy. You can't beat the word. Cludgy. Cludgy. Have you heard that word before?

[00:01:27] [SPEAKER_01]: What does cludgy mean?

[00:01:28] [SPEAKER_01]: Why don't you take a guess? Take a wee guess. See if you can think of it.

[00:01:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Ah, I mean, there's a part of me just because there's something about it that sounds like it's like

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_00]: muddy or sludgy or sticky or something like that. But I don't know.

[00:01:46] [SPEAKER_00]: You're not far. You're not far. It's the Scots word for toilet.

[00:01:54] [SPEAKER_01]: The Scots word for toilet.

[00:01:55] [SPEAKER_01]: That was close.

[00:01:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, it could be sticky and mucky and stuff.

[00:02:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it can be all those things.

[00:02:05] [SPEAKER_01]: Especially some of the public toilets up in the highlands.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_00]: That's very cludgy.

[00:02:13] [SPEAKER_00]: Who is one person from Scotland's past or present that you'd like to have a beer, whiskey, iron brew or coffee with?

[00:02:19] [SPEAKER_00]: And would you like to have a beer, whiskey, iron brew or coffee with them?

[00:02:22] [SPEAKER_01]: I think this was a similar question on the last one.

[00:02:26] [SPEAKER_01]: I had a similar question.

[00:02:27] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I chose Robert the Bruce.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: You did.

[00:02:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Has that changed? Has that changed?

[00:02:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, and what would you want to drink with?

[00:02:35] [SPEAKER_00]: Even if it didn't change, what would you want to drink with him?

[00:02:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, well, I think without a doubt it would be Robert the Bruce.

[00:02:44] [SPEAKER_01]: What would I drink with Robert the Bruce?

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_01]: Can we not have like a crazy concoction of all of them?

[00:02:50] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you could.

[00:02:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Like get a dirty pint. So a dirty pint.

[00:02:54] [SPEAKER_01]: So a pint glass half filled with Tennant's lager.

[00:02:58] [SPEAKER_01]: Shot of whiskey in there.

[00:02:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Throw the coffee in there. Topped off with iron brew.

[00:03:03] [SPEAKER_01]: Slange. That sounds good.

[00:03:05] [SPEAKER_01]: That sounds absolutely, truly awful, but it sounds terrible.

[00:03:09] [SPEAKER_01]: It sounds like a good crack anyway.

[00:03:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Looking at these, you know, like beer for what we call beer would not really be whatever they might have encountered.

[00:03:20] [SPEAKER_00]: Coffee was probably not really a thing at that time.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_00]: Probably not.

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_00]: I can't imagine it was.

[00:03:27] [SPEAKER_00]: Iron brew. Definitely not a thing at that point.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's a real opportunity to introduce Robert to a lot of modern drinks.

[00:03:35] [SPEAKER_00]: And he could maybe make his own decisions as to whether...

[00:03:38] [SPEAKER_01]: Well, in medieval times you could probably have said like this is some magical elixir.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_01]: You know, and you drink this magical elixir and you will live forever.

[00:03:48] [SPEAKER_01]: And who knows? He possibly could have cured...

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_01]: And we call it iron brew.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it certainly cures a hangover so it could have cured whatever illness he was suffering from at the time.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_00]: He's like, it's a strange orange color.

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not okay with this, but if you say so...

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_00]: If you say it and then you take a drink and you say, this tastes a little aspartamey.

[00:04:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Isn't there a full sugar version?

[00:04:13] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I'll need to add some extra sugar in so that it's like the original recipe.

[00:04:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, number four. What is one popular misconception of Scotland that you'd like to dispel?

[00:04:24] [SPEAKER_01]: That the weather is awful. The weather is not awful.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_01]: You are unprepared for the weather.

[00:04:30] [SPEAKER_01]: The weather around you is the weather around you.

[00:04:33] [SPEAKER_01]: It's the same everywhere in the world.

[00:04:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Like if we were to go to a hot country and we...

[00:04:38] [SPEAKER_01]: And us complain of it being too hot, you would just say, yeah, it's a hot country.

[00:04:42] [SPEAKER_01]: Of course it is.

[00:04:45] [SPEAKER_01]: Scotland and Britain in general, as well as Ireland and all the islands,

[00:04:49] [SPEAKER_01]: we're just an island floating around in the Atlantic Ocean minding our own business.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_01]: We get hit by everything that comes in from the Atlantic.

[00:04:57] [SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.

[00:05:00] [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, there's no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.

[00:05:04] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a nice... That's a good way to think about it.

[00:05:07] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, and number five...

[00:05:08] [SPEAKER_00]: That was Billy Connolly that said that.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay.

[00:05:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you're not taking...

[00:05:13] [SPEAKER_01]: No, I never take credit for something that's not mine.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_00]: All right, number five.

[00:05:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Is there anything you'd like to know about Canada

[00:05:21] [SPEAKER_00]: as though I am the source of all information about Canada?

[00:05:27] [SPEAKER_01]: I've got a lot of...

[00:05:29] [SPEAKER_01]: Just in general, I've had a lot of Canadians on my tours this year.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_01]: But what's this sort of...

[00:05:35] [SPEAKER_01]: You say there's a misconceptions about Scotland.

[00:05:38] [SPEAKER_01]: I love finding out what people's stereotypes,

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_01]: what the sort of most known stereotype of the Scots is,

[00:05:44] [SPEAKER_01]: depending on the country.

[00:05:46] [SPEAKER_01]: So what do Canadians think of our sort of...

[00:05:51] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like what's the big stereotype in Canada

[00:05:54] [SPEAKER_01]: of the Scots or Scotland in general?

[00:05:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I'll tell you that this podcast exists because

[00:06:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I thought I was very Irish and it turned out I was very,

[00:06:05] [SPEAKER_00]: very Scottish genetically.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And so forever people with Irish would do like the...

[00:06:12] [SPEAKER_00]: You must like a drink thing, that sort of thing.

[00:06:17] [SPEAKER_00]: And as soon as I started saying that I had some sort of

[00:06:19] [SPEAKER_00]: Scottish background, people started making references

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_00]: to being cheap.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the whole frugal thing.

[00:06:31] [SPEAKER_01]: Do you know where that originated from?

[00:06:34] [SPEAKER_01]: No.

[00:06:35] [SPEAKER_01]: Hungary.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_01]: Hungary?

[00:06:37] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:06:38] [SPEAKER_01]: So there's a map on Google.

[00:06:41] [SPEAKER_01]: You can sort of Google it.

[00:06:42] [SPEAKER_01]: It's like who jokes...

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_01]: The countries that other countries joke the most about

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_01]: and Hungary joke most about Scotland.

[00:06:52] [SPEAKER_01]: Like, you know, you get the classic,

[00:06:54] [SPEAKER_01]: there's an Englishman, was that an Englishman,

[00:06:56] [SPEAKER_01]: an Irishman and a Scotsman and they walk into a bar

[00:06:58] [SPEAKER_01]: and like those sorts of jokes.

[00:06:59] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think there's sort of differences.

[00:07:01] [SPEAKER_01]: There's like a doctor, a rabbi, a priest

[00:07:04] [SPEAKER_01]: or whatever walking...

[00:07:05] [SPEAKER_01]: You have those type of jokes?

[00:07:06] [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for some reason we're the butt of all the jokes

[00:07:08] [SPEAKER_01]: in Hungary.

[00:07:09] [SPEAKER_01]: And this year we definitely were because they managed to

[00:07:13] [SPEAKER_01]: beat us in the European Championships.

[00:07:16] [SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, we're over that because England didn't win.

[00:07:21] Yes.

[00:07:22] [SPEAKER_01]: So if England had won, there would have been a real problem.

[00:07:26] [SPEAKER_01]: Oh, absolutely.

[00:07:27] [SPEAKER_00]: If England wouldn't be here, I would have emigrated.

[00:07:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Scotland's great win was England losing,

[00:07:33] [SPEAKER_00]: which is healthy.

[00:07:36] [SPEAKER_00]: That's a healthy win.

[00:07:36] [SPEAKER_01]: We're just there for the party, you know?

[00:07:39] [SPEAKER_01]: I think the quote was no Scotland, no party.

[00:07:42] [SPEAKER_01]: No party.

[00:07:43] [SPEAKER_01]: And that was definitely, definitely true.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00]: All right.

[00:07:46] [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:08:14] [SPEAKER_00]: This is the end of the podcast, including the Toronto St Andrews Society,

[00:08:17] [SPEAKER_00]: the Scottish Society of Ottawa, the Scottish Banner

[00:08:20] [SPEAKER_00]: and Scottish Studies at the University of Guelph.

[00:08:23] [SPEAKER_00]: Your support is never taken for granted.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, goodbye.